The Trump administration hasn’t delivered the prescription drug pricing reductions it claims, and may be basing those claims on misrepresented data, according to a new analysis from Public Citizen, an advocacy group. The White House hasn’t published the methods behind its claims about Trump’s drug pricing record, so the claims haven’t been and can’t be independently verified, the group’s analysis says.
If the consumer drug pricing index, or CPI-RX, has seen unprecedented drops, Trump should get almost none of the credit, Public Citizen said. Few of Trump’s most-favored-nation, or MFN, policies to reduce drug prices have even taken effect, the analysis says, nor would many of his policies be trackable in the index.
As of January 2026, all 16 companies that had entered MFN deals with Trump raised the prices of 272 of their drugs. TrumpRx is the only part of President Trump’s MFN program that is fully underway, and the results have been lackluster. Most Americans are better off and save more money by purchasing drugs through their health insurance plans. TrumpRx may also cause consumers to overpay on brand drugs, as many of the medicines on the site have cheaper generic competitors available at lower price points.
Policies initiated under other presidents and factors outside Trump’s control are more likely to be causing a decline in CPI-RX, especially the Medicare drug price negotiation program, Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for Public Citizen, said in a statement.
“Trump has three kinds of drug pricing policy: fake, exaggerated, and not-real-yet, probably-won’t-happen,” Maybarduk said. “Prescription drug corporations are raising the prices of new medicines every year, and the CPI doesn’t even count that cost.”
He said it’s more likely that patent cliffs and Medicare price negotiation, which took effect this year and saved billions, drove changes in the CPI-RX.
“Trump’s claim to have lowered drug prices amounts to distortion and stealing credit from past administrations whose policies actually made a difference,” Maybarduk said.
